Panel = CNBC's investment committee; "View" is the panel's net take this episode and the cell names which member(s) held it. This is an audio podcast, and this edition's Spotify transcript carried no (mm:ss) cues at all — only speaker diarization and chapter headings — so each "At" cell simply opens the episode and the talking points below are labelled by segment rather than timestamp. Order: Positive → Neutral → Negative. Research: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis.
| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What the committee said | At |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MRVL | Marvell Technology | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The day's big mover — up nearly 10% and off the best levels — after a custom-chip deal that gives Alphabet an option to buy a $12.2 billion stake. Terranova owns it and gets first crack: "this is consistent with the type of financial arrangements that we've heard with the hyperscalers. It's very important to have customized chips now existing with Alphabet — that is a relationship with Broadcom." He reads Broadcom's decline as a second-order worry rather than a share-loss verdict: "I don't think necessarily Broadcom is down on the concerns that Marvell is going to take market share on the custom chips for the TPUs. It's more about in the future, if Marvell builds the relationship with Alphabet, do they turn to Marvell for silicon purchases — that would be detrimental to Broadcom." On the stock: "Marvell needed this. The stock had a bit of a pullback recently towards the end of June. It is restarting the momentum. This is a good deal." The structure matters — of the ~59 million shares, 57 million are contingent on the relationship and on Alphabet actually delivering future purchases. | listen↗ |
| GOOGL | Alphabet | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Simpson bought more — but explicitly not on the Marvell headline: "completely unrelated to this, Scott. But I do like the diversification they're doing within their TPU ecosystem — they've got Broadcom, they've got NVIDIA, now they've got Marvell, and it's just shoring up what they need." On the long-standing criticism: "if you would criticise Alphabet for anything, it's the massive spend. But what we're seeing now is a bit more of a disciplined and targeted spend." The position is being built deliberately and as a source of funds is IBM: "we've been building this position out here regardless of this move… I look at this as a really long-term hold. If you think about it, we basically went from IBM into Alphabet — it's been taking a few months for us to do it. We still have a 1% position in IBM, but basically that's what we're doing." Over two to three years he calls Alphabet "a much better play, more diversified business." | listen↗ |
| MRNA | Moderna | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The stock more than doubled. Annika Kim Constantino: this is the first-ever phase-3 trial of the personalized cancer vaccine Moderna developed with Merck, and analysts had called it "a really make-or-break moment" because the street has high expectations for the shot across different cancers. The mRNA-based shot in combination with Merck's Keytruda met the study's main goal of reducing the risk of melanoma returning or spreading versus Keytruda alone — "some analysts say this trial in melanoma reinforces that confidence and signals the shot could become a long-term growth driver." Still to come: the filing for approval and the full data. Simpson, a Merck holder: "I hope this is a validation of an entirely new way to tackle cancer… if you're a short seller of Moderna, today's not the best day for your book." No committee position in the name, but Wapner uses it as the archetype: "the willingness to walk on straight lines for a while in hopes of a big payoff like you're getting today — that's often how the biotech trade looks." | listen↗ |
| LLY | Eli Lilly | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Terranova's template for what a genuine breakthrough is worth: "the perfect example is what we've witnessed with Eli Lilly over the last five years in the GLP-1 — it's up close to 400%, 371%. And that really built in 2023 when we began to see the introduction, the utilisation, the engagement and the success rate on it. What follows is not just a momentary move higher — now your expectation is the revenue growth is consistently going to build in the coming quarters. And that's what we've watched with Eli Lilly, trading at an all-time high today. We talked about it yesterday in final trades." Simpson's overlay: Lilly and Merck "have been backfilling with acquisitions, even Amgen with Horizon Therapeutics… but someday that moves on and you need to have something behind it." | listen↗ |
| XLE | Energy Select Sector SPDR | QT · SA · STK | Positive | Energy hit a record high, with the XLE going for its eighth straight positive day. Terranova's point is that this is not just crude: "this is refined products — diesel — what is known on NYMEX as the 3-2-1 crack, basically crude oil to gasoline to diesel. It's at an all-time high." The supply-side driver: "you've had significant damage to Russian refineries as a result of the Ukrainians being very tactical and targeting those refineries." Talkington, who has "been talking energy for the past six years" and calls it a staple of her portfolio, gives the flat-line warning: "XLE was flat in 2025, so you had to be there already to enjoy the plus-40% returns unless you tactically rotated into it." Her fundamentals: E&P companies "really aren't drilling that much since this war started," the SPR is at an all-time low and "we're going to have to fill that sometime." Her conclusion: "these stocks have a little bit for everyone — growth, dividends, extra distributions… stay long, because we've got to continue to drill." | listen↗ |
| VLO | Valero Energy | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Still the trade, with an explicit positioning caveat. Terranova: "I've been talking Valero, Phillips 66. Well, the refiners see the best trades. You need to own the refiners, especially going into the fall." But he then applies his own sentiment discipline to his own call: "I always look at things from the standpoint of positioning and sentiment… they almost are beginning to look like the Micron type of memory trade at the end of June. Everyone's there already, everyone knows what we've been talking about. Look at positioning, look at sentiment — it is extremely bullish at this point." Not an exit ("doesn't mean you leave the energy trade at all"), but a rotation cue toward less-crowded energy exposure. | listen↗ |
| PSX | Phillips 66 | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Named alongside Valero as the refining exposure Terranova has been recommending into an all-time-high crack spread — "you need to own the refiners, especially going into the fall" — carrying the same crowding warning: on momentum, sentiment and positioning the refiners are starting to look like the late-June memory trade, "extremely bullish at this point." | listen↗ |
| DVN | Devon Energy | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Terranova's less-crowded alternative to the refiners inside the same energy trade: "there's other places that you could be, like a Devon, like a FANG. Those are working as well" — E&P exposure that has not yet attracted the extreme positioning he flags in Valero and Phillips 66. | listen↗ |
| FANG | Diamondback Energy | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The other E&P Terranova points to as the way to stay long energy without buying the crowded refiners — "like a Devon, like a FANG. Those are working as well" — against Talkington's backdrop of under-drilling since the war started and an SPR at an all-time low that eventually has to be refilled. | listen↗ |
| GLD | SPDR Gold Shares | QT · SA · STK | Positive | Gold is coming off its worst day since the end of July and copper is at a two-week low, yet the options tape flips bullish on the buyback news. Renick from the Cboe: "today's Treasury buyback announcement is sending big ripples across all macro assets, but in particular gold. In GLD, calls are outpacing puts nearly three to one on 2½ times the average volume. The most bought contract is the 420-strike call expiring October 16th, which goes for 12 bucks a pop and needs the ETF to jump 5% by expiration." Wells Fargo reiterated a positive precious-metals outlook with gold at $4,900 for 2026. Liz Thomas is back on side after stepping away: "I liked it for a long time while it was rising in spring, then I stopped understanding what was going on with it, so I stopped liking it because I couldn't build a good thesis. Now what we're seeing is renewed interest — and I don't think it's just yields or the Treasury. There's continued geopolitical tension. A lot of the reason gold sold off earlier this year was that central banks had to raise cash to protect their countries from rising oil prices. Oil is still elevated but not that problematic, and the ongoing tension gives central banks a new reason to say: we don't want dollars, we want reserves, we want to buy gold again. I think gold can find its way back towards 5,000 in this cycle." Simpson: "I hope Liz is right. 5,000 — I would have taken Wells Fargo's 4,900 call… I like gold moving higher." | listen↗ |
| AEM | Agnico Eagle Mines | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Simpson's way of owning the gold call through the miner rather than the metal: "we own Agnico Eagle, AEM — it was our best performer last year. The stock's still down about 9% over the past six months, and that's on a 49% run [in the past month]. So this thing's up almost 50% over the past month. So I like AEM here, and I like gold moving higher." The setup he is describing is a miner that has already put in a violent monthly rally yet is still below where it stood six months ago. | listen↗ |
| TLT | iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The clean options expression of the Treasury's buyback: Renick — "looking at bonds, in the TLT call buying is double puts." Long-duration bonds rally when long-end yields fall, and the announcement that the Treasury will double the size of its long-end buybacks is the direct mechanism; the desk's framing all session is that the Treasury has revealed a pain threshold near 5.30% on the 30-year and will defend it into the midterms. | listen↗ |
| IBIT | iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Renick's third macro-asset read, and the most one-sided of the day: "the other thing not to be omitted here is Bitcoin. With additional help from news of favourable regulatory measures today, IBIT has a lot of action — arguably the most bullish in a long time. Almost five times as many calls bought versus puts, on six times average volume." His relative-strength note: gold's price is back to May levels while bitcoin is back to June, "but you can't talk gold without a little Bitcoin." Talkington picks the thread up later — "looks like crypto's finally waking up" — and uses it as the tactical case for Robinhood. | listen↗ |
| JPM | JPMorgan Chase | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Added to Fundstrat's Tom Lee's updated list of top core stock ideas, and the committee agrees — Terranova owns it, and Simpson: "I agree with him on JP Morgan. Best of breed financial services. I think the awakening of IPOs is not over, and this company is 100% deserving of being on his list." Note the curve backdrop Liz Thomas supplies: the buyback flattens the curve, which is "classically bad for financials" — but "financials have done so well this entire year with a flattening yield curve that I don't think that matters right now. I think this is even bullish for financials because of everything else that is going well." | listen↗ |
| ANET | Arista Networks | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The other name Tom Lee added to his core list, and one Terranova already owns: "it's been a core holding. It's participating in AI networking along with Cisco and Ciena. We've had it for quite some time. It's worked incredibly well, and the revenue growth is accelerating." Simpson concurs: "I agree with Tom on Arista." Notable against Terranova's own framing of capital rotating out of semis — networking is the part of the AI complex he is not trimming. | listen↗ |
| IBKR | Interactive Brokers | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Terranova's preferred brokerage exposure, and the destination of his Robinhood sale: "we sold it based on a breakdown in momentum. I'd rather go to Interactive Brokers." The same broker-beneficiary logic without the crypto beta that the rest of the desk is arguing about in Robinhood. | listen↗ |
| WMT | Walmart | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Reports tomorrow before the bell with shares disappointing, and the options tape is leaning the other way from the committee. Renick: traders are "prepping for a 4.6% swing," and the bias is "slightly bearish… over half the volume in Walmart options is put trading, and the puts are pulling in higher premiums — about two-thirds of the almost $60 million traded is on the put side. Three of the top five contracts and seven of the top 10 trades by dollar amount are either neutral or bearish." The one bullish print looked like "someone closing out a short put position and rolling it up to the 125 strike expiring September 4th in hopes the stock keeps climbing." Terranova owns it and is unmoved: "Walmart has been one of the biggest beneficiaries since the pandemic. They've beaten on revenue every quarter since. They're also going to benefit from tariff refunds this quarter and next quarter." | listen↗ |
| Anthropic | Anthropic | — | Positive | (Private, on file to go public.) The favourable half of the day's AI-lab comparison. Kate Rooney: "what is extra tough for OpenAI is that they are now being directly compared to Anthropic, as both companies are now on file to go public with the SEC. Anthropic, from what we have been hearing, just has the better margin profile. I reported earlier this week that Anthropic was profitable, at least on an EBITDA basis. It brought in $11½ billion in the quarter according to sources I've spoken to." On annualised revenue: "OpenAI is around $40 billion; Anthropic just ramped up to $65 billion." Her caveat: "we also don't know if these are apples to apples — they're not public companies, so the accounting can differ slightly. But there's going to be a lot of attention on these S-1s." No committee position. | listen↗ |
| MRK | Merck | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Split — Simpson owns it, Terranova sold it. The news is unambiguously good: the Moderna-partnered personalized cancer vaccine met its phase-3 endpoint in combination with Keytruda. Simpson: "from a Merck holder's perspective, the Keytruda, which I think is coming off patent in 2028, could be extended now for these other uses. This is a huge day for society if it's even half close to what we're hoping." His broader stance: "my thesis on biotech and pharma is kind of holding my nose from a valuation standpoint — I've been looking at these as the next beneficiary of AI to actually come to fruition." Terranova explains why it left his ETF and won't be chased: "the revenue growth was the challenge — it wasn't the momentum score, which was very strong at the end of July. But over the last three years you're talking about low single-digit revenue growth. That's the reason it fell out." And on price: "from a valuation perspective it is rich on a historical basis — Merck trading at nearly 55 times. That's a hefty price to pay. That's for 3% growth." Simpson concedes: "that's totally fair." | listen↗ |
| AVGO | Broadcom | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Down on the Marvell-Alphabet headline, and Terranova argues the market is pricing the wrong risk: "I don't think Broadcom is down on the concerns that Marvell is going to take market share on the custom chips for the TPUs. It's more about, in the future, if Marvell builds the relationship with Alphabet, do they turn to Marvell for silicon purchases — that would be detrimental to Broadcom. So these relationships I think ultimately are going to continue." Simpson keeps it inside the bull case for Alphabet rather than against Broadcom: the TPU ecosystem now runs "Broadcom, NVIDIA and Marvell… it's just shoring up what they need." | listen↗ |
| TJX | TJX Companies | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Comps came in at 4%, the guide "wasn't great," and they're opening more stores — which Wapner notes the street doesn't love. Simpson had hedged into it: "right at the close yesterday, before the earnings report today, we wanted to hedge half the position, so I sold a 152½ covered call — pretty tight, 1% out of the money. If you were to annualise this covered call, which you can't really do in real life, the math works out to a 600% annualised premium on a call that expires on Friday. It's just a fun trade." His read on the print: "I did think the numbers were good. What the street probably didn't like was the third-quarter guide. But they didn't bring their guide down for the full year. Maybe the Marshalls and TJ Maxx store sales were a little light, but HomeGoods was great, International was great — this was a bit of sell the news." Terranova is harder on it: "that's the challenge for what we saw today — 60% of the business is Marmaxx, TJ Maxx and Marshalls, and you can't miss there. You can't have comp sales come in light. That's been the strength of the business, the story we've all been telling for the last several years." | listen↗ |
| HOOD | Robinhood Markets | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | The day's real debate. Tom Lee names it a stock to avoid in 2026 on his updated core-ideas list — and gets pushback from three directions. Simpson (long): "I couldn't disagree more… revenues were up 32% to a record $1.13 billion, earnings per share up 48%, a record $22 billion of net assets. This is a stock with a very high valuation, and if you stretch it out you haven't made much money over the past year — but over the past three years there aren't many stocks we've made more money with. I just believe in Vlad. I believe the next generation of investors is embedded in this ecosystem." On the market's framing: does it correlate with bitcoin? "Absolutely — and incorrectly. The original version of Robinhood was a thing for kids to trade online during COVID, and it was the Bitcoin proxy after it went public. But it's matured into a true financial services company — they made an RIA acquisition, they own a custodial platform, there's a lot more going on here." Talkington (out — "it got called away at 110, so I'm out of the position") takes the opposite mechanism to the same conclusion: "it is definitely going to be driven by crypto. So looks like crypto's finally waking up — and tactically I actually think Robinhood could start heating up because it is still driven by that. So I disagree with Tom also." Terranova sold on process, not on the story: "we sold it based on a breakdown in momentum. I'd rather go to Interactive Brokers." Wapner's irony: "Tom Lee is synonymous with crypto and he doesn't like Robinhood — that's the most interesting part of this trade." | listen↗ |
| HD | Home Depot | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | A held name its owner is candid about. Simpson, on a frozen housing market: "how can they [do better] with rates where they are? Maybe this little pullback in the long end will help a little, but I don't think so. If we talk about dead money — which we do often with Netflix, and I disagree with that comment — I think Home Depot might be more dead money. We own it, we're investors in this, and when it turns around they will be beneficiaries." On the print itself he's positive: "the numbers were good. They exceeded my expectations. The pro side was fantastic. They did not lower guide. I thought it was better than what we saw out of Lowe's today. But as we all know, Home Depot trades at a much higher multiple than Lowe's does — so whatever these reactions are, they're tepid, they're short term. If you're an investor in either one you're looking a lot longer term than the next couple of weeks." | listen↗ |
| MU | Micron Technology | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Named twice, both times as a caution rather than a call. Talkington on the earnings math: technology is the biggest contributor to growth "and within tech, it's really NVIDIA and Micron skewing that even more — the earnings are outsized." Terranova uses the name as a positioning analogue for today's crowded refiner trade: the refiners "almost are beginning to look like the Micron type of memory trade at the end of June… everyone's there already." And in his opening flow read, memory is one of the three places capital is leaving: "capital is coming out of the momentum factor, it's coming out of memory, it's coming out of semiconductors." | listen↗ |
| NVDA | Nvidia | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Not traded today, but it bookends the show. Talkington's earnings caveat: within tech "it's really NVIDIA and Micron skewing that even more — the earnings are outsized," and the thing to watch a year out is the rate of change of earnings, not the level. It is also one of the three suppliers inside Alphabet's TPU ecosystem in Simpson's Alphabet case (Broadcom, NVIDIA, Marvell). And Santoli sets the calendar: with semis down 5% on the week and "caught up in their own dynamic of liquidation, oversold, bounce, resistance," the next macro event for the group is Nvidia's report — "we'll see a week from today, right? NVIDIA. That's going to be the next big moment." | listen↗ |
| CSCO | Cisco Systems | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Named as part of the AI-networking cohort in Terranova's defence of his Arista core position: Arista "is participating in AI networking along with Cisco and Ciena." Peer-set context, no stance on Cisco itself. | listen↗ |
| CIEN | Ciena | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | The other name in the AI-networking group Terranova cites alongside Arista and Cisco — the optical/transport leg of the same buildout. Context only; no stance on Ciena itself. (The auto-transcript renders it "Sienna.") | listen↗ |
| AMGN | Amgen | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Cited by Simpson as evidence of how large-cap pharma has been buying its growth rather than discovering it: "Lilly and Merck have been backfilling with acquisitions — even Amgen with Horizon Therapeutics… but someday that moves on and you need to have something behind it." A structural caution on the sector, not a call on Amgen. | listen↗ |
| RVMD | Revolution Medicines | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Wapner's precedent for what a Moderna-type day looks like a year later: "remember Revolution Medicines too — they had that incredible pancreatic cancer breakthrough which changed the trajectory of that name. People who invest heavily in the space, like Michelle Ross of Stempoint Capital, often talk about it. It's the hope, the hope, the hope — and the payoff. That's what the big bet ends up being in healthcare and especially in the biotech names like that one." No committee position. | listen↗ |
| NFLX | Netflix | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Raised only as the desk's standing "dead money" reference — and Simpson pushes back on it while applying the label elsewhere: "if we talk about dead money, which we do often with Netflix, and I disagree with that comment, I think Home Depot might be more dead money." No fresh stance on Netflix. | listen↗ |
| IBM | IBM | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Trimmed again today, and the seller says out loud where this ends. Simpson: "100% [it's related to the earnings] — those earnings were so disappointing I couldn't believe it as a shareholder. We started selling, I think it was July 14th… we didn't dump it because the stock was down 25% in one day. Maybe we did sell some of it; it recovered quite a bit." Asked directly whether he is slow-walking to the exit and viewers should expect more: "absolutely, because we have 1% left of IBM, and that'll happen. I do everything at a glacier pace." The bull case he still holds: "I love the long-term prospects of IBM. We've owned it for many years. The quantum component is probably the long-term holy grail. I'm sure we could revisit it and own it again." The reason not to wait: "if I'm looking over the next two to three years, I'm really looking at Alphabet as a much better play, more diversified business. And if you're worried about software — and I'm not as worried as other people — that's a little bit of something hanging over IBM that you have to be cognisant of." | listen↗ |
| LOW | Lowe's Companies | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | A muted outlook and a price-target cut, against a housing market the sector itself described as "frozen" the day before. Simpson, who owns Home Depot rather than Lowe's, makes the comparison explicit: Home Depot's "numbers were good, they exceeded my expectations, the pro side was fantastic, they did not lower guide. I thought it was better than what we saw out of Lowe's today." His only qualifier cuts the other way on valuation — Home Depot "trades at a much higher multiple than Lowe's does." | listen↗ |
| OpenAI | OpenAI | — | Negative | (Private, on file with the SEC.) The unfavourable half of the AI-lab comparison, and Wapner frames the session around "the disparity between the way the street is starting to view these two names." Per the Wall Street Journal overnight, OpenAI's Q2 sales showed only tepid growth versus Anthropic's, and Kate Rooney's numbers are the story: "operating loss grew to $12.3 billion in the quarter, up from about $9 billion in Q1. Losses also outpaced revenue growth — revenue for the quarter just under $7 billion, up about 18% from the first quarter." Set against Anthropic's EBITDA profitability and $65B annualised run-rate, OpenAI's is "around $40 billion." The mitigants: the data is backward-looking (through end-June), and — per Jim Cramer's sources and confirmed on air by president Greg Brockman — July revenue grew 20%, enterprise 32%. Rooney's caution: "it doesn't speak to profitability, and that's the thing that's really getting attention." Also in the background: "OpenAI has been lately in the news about top names leaving." No committee position. | listen↗ |
"View" = the panel's net stance this episode, with the committee member named in the note. Discussed but not tabled: MicroStrategy, raised only as a joke about Tom Lee's crypto affiliations ("I'm pretty sure he had a position in MicroStrategy at some point, so that seems counterintuitive for him not to like Robinhood"); SpaceX and Anthropic, named in passing by Talkington as the outsized contributors she would back out of the 51.6% Q2 earnings-growth figure (the auto-transcript garbles the pair — treat the attribution as approximate); Keytruda and the Merck/Moderna melanoma trial as products rather than positions; the Canada–US trade negotiation (Jamieson Greer, Dominic LeBlanc, Mark Carney's post) and the news update (Congo's Ebola outbreak past 5,000 cases, the Charlie Kirk prosecution filing, the James Comey case) — no securities stance. People not tabled: Scott Wapner & the committee (Joe Terranova, Liz Thomas, Kevin Simpson, Bryn Talkington), Michael Santoli, Oliver Renick, Kate Rooney, Annika Kim Constantino, Eamon Javers, Frank Holland, Tom Lee, Ed Yardeni, Kevin Warsh, Jim Cramer, Greg Brockman, Michelle Ross, Vlad Tenev, Janet Yellen, Robert Rubin.
This edition's Spotify transcript carried no (mm:ss) cues, so segments are labelled by the episode's own chapter headings instead of timestamps.
A jargon-free summary of why each substantively-argued name matters. (These render on each ticker's consolidated page, where this audio episode has no excerpt to pull.)
Marvell designs custom chips — semiconductors built to one customer's specification rather than sold off the shelf. Today Alphabet gave Marvell a deal that includes an option for Alphabet to buy a $12.2 billion stake in it, and the stock jumped about 10%.
Read the structure before the headline: of roughly 59 million shares in the arrangement, 57 million only vest if the relationship actually produces future chip purchases. So it is a very large option on execution, not cash in the door. What it does buy immediately is credibility — Joe Terranova calls it the same kind of financial arrangement the big cloud companies have been striking all year, and says the stock "needed this" after a pullback at the end of June: the momentum is restarting.
The subtlety worth carrying forward is what it means for Broadcom, which has been Alphabet's custom-chip partner. Terranova argues Broadcom's decline today is not about losing share on the current chips — it is about the possibility that, once Marvell is embedded, Alphabet buys more of its silicon from Marvell in future.
Kevin Simpson bought more Alphabet, and was careful to say it had nothing to do with today's Marvell headline. What he likes is that Alphabet now has three separate suppliers for the chips that run its AI — Broadcom, Nvidia and now Marvell. Depending on one supplier is a hostage position; depending on three is a negotiating position.
The other change he cites is discipline. The standing criticism of Alphabet has been the sheer size of its AI spending; his read is that the spending has become more targeted, which is what an investor wants to see before a capital-heavy phase turns into returns.
Most usefully, he names the source of the money: he is moving out of IBM and into Alphabet, a switch that has taken months and is nearly finished (IBM is down to a 1% position). Over a two-to-three-year horizon he calls Alphabet "a much better play, more diversified business" — and this is a long-term hold, not a trade.
Rare candour from a seller. Kevin Simpson began selling IBM on 14 July after an earnings report so bad the stock fell about 25% in a single day — "so disappointing I couldn't believe it as a shareholder." He didn't dump the position; the stock recovered some ground and he has been trimming into it ever since.
Asked directly whether viewers should expect more selling, he says yes: 1% of the portfolio is left and it is going. "I do everything at a glacier pace." That is a useful disclosure, because it tells you the remaining supply from this holder is small and slow, not a sudden liquidation.
He is not hostile to the company. He calls IBM's quantum-computing work the potential long-term prize and says he could own it again. The reason to leave now is opportunity cost plus one risk: if artificial intelligence erodes traditional enterprise software — a worry he shares less than most — that lands on IBM, and over the next two to three years he simply thinks Alphabet is the better place for the same dollars.
Broadcom fell on the Marvell news, and Terranova thinks the market is worrying about the wrong thing. The immediate fear — that Marvell takes share in Alphabet's current custom AI chips (its "TPUs") — is not, in his view, what is being priced. The real question is the next round: once Marvell has a working relationship with Alphabet, does Alphabet start buying more of its silicon there instead?
That is a slower, more strategic risk than a lost contract, and it is why he expects the existing relationships to continue for now. Simpson's version of the same fact is bullish for the buyer rather than bearish for the supplier: Alphabet now has Broadcom, Nvidia and Marvell, and having three sources is exactly what a company spending this much on chips should want.
Moderna's stock more than doubled in a day. The reason is the first full-scale ("phase 3") trial result for a personalized cancer vaccine it developed with Merck — a shot custom-made to a patient's own tumour, using the same mRNA technology as its COVID vaccine.
Given alongside Merck's existing cancer drug Keytruda, the vaccine met the trial's main goal: melanoma patients were less likely to see the cancer return or spread than with Keytruda alone. Analysts had called this a make-or-break moment, because expectations for the technology across other cancers rest on it working here at all.
Two things still have to happen before this is revenue: the companies have to file for approval, and the full data has to be published. Nobody on the desk owns Moderna — the committee's exposure is through Merck — but the day is treated as validation of an entirely new approach to treating cancer, and as the classic biotech payoff after years of a flat stock chart.
Two committee members, two opposite conclusions from the same good news. Kevin Simpson owns Merck and points to the specific commercial prize: Keytruda, Merck's blockbuster cancer drug, loses patent protection around 2028 — but if it works in combination with the new personalized vaccine, that opens fresh approved uses and extends the franchise beyond the patent cliff.
Joe Terranova sold it and explains exactly why, in a way worth borrowing. The stock's momentum score was strong; what failed was the business: roughly low-single-digit revenue growth over three years. And the price does not forgive that — he puts Merck at nearly 55 times earnings, "a hefty price to pay… that's for 3% growth." (55× is unusually rich for a big pharmaceutical company; the multiple assumes growth the recent record hasn't produced.)
Simpson doesn't argue with the valuation — "that's totally fair." He is holding his nose on price because he believes drug companies are the next industry where AI actually produces results. Note that today's breakthrough was mRNA science, not AI, so that thesis is still unproven.
Lilly is used as the worked example of what a genuine medical breakthrough is worth over time. Its weight-loss drugs (the GLP-1 class) inflected in 2023, and the stock is up roughly 371% over five years, trading at an all-time high today.
Terranova's point is about the shape of that return, not the size. A breakthrough day is not a one-off jump — once the drug is being prescribed and used successfully, the expectation resets to revenue growth that keeps building quarter after quarter. That compounding is where the bulk of the return came from, and it is the pattern he is implicitly asking whether Moderna and Merck can now repeat.
The counterweight, from Simpson: Lilly, Merck and Amgen have all been buying smaller companies to fill gaps in their pipelines. Acquisitions can carry a few years of growth, "but someday that moves on and you need to have something behind it" — meaning the internal science eventually has to deliver.
XLE is the fund that holds the big US energy companies; it hit a record high and is on its eighth straight up day. The important correction Terranova makes is that this rally is not really about the price of crude oil — it is about refining.
The measure he cites, the "3-2-1 crack," is the profit margin a refinery earns turning three barrels of crude into two of gasoline and one of diesel. It is at an all-time high, partly because Ukrainian strikes have damaged Russian refineries, removing refining capacity from the world (and hitting Europe in particular). So the money is being made in the middle of the chain, not at the wellhead.
Bryn Talkington's structural case for staying long: producers have not been drilling much since the war began, and the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve — the government's emergency oil stockpile — is at a record low and will have to be refilled at some point, which is future demand. Her practical warning is that the sector went nowhere in 2025, so you had to already own it to collect this year's 40%-plus. "Stay long, because we've got to continue to drill."
Valero is a pure refiner — it buys crude and sells gasoline and diesel — so it is the most direct way to own the record refining margins driving the energy rally. Terranova has been recommending it and still says you need to own the refiners going into the autumn.
What makes this entry unusually honest is that he then applies his own discipline against his own call. He tracks how crowded a trade is (positioning) and how uniformly bullish people sound about it (sentiment), and by both measures the refiners now look like Micron did at the end of June — right before that trade stopped working. "Everyone's there already. Everyone knows what we've been talking about."
That is not a sell. It is a warning that the easy part is behind, and a nudge toward energy exposure that is not yet crowded — which is why he names Devon and Diamondback in the same breath.
Phillips 66 is the other refiner Terranova has been recommending, and it carries the same two-part message as Valero: own the refiners into the autumn because refining margins are at record levels, but understand that everybody now knows the story.
His framework is that a trade stops paying not when the fundamentals turn but when the last buyer has already bought. On that basis the refiners are "extremely bullish" in sentiment and positioning — the same reading he had on the memory-chip trade shortly before it reversed. Own it, but do not add to it blindly.
Devon drills for and produces oil and gas rather than refining it, which is precisely why Terranova names it. His concern with the refiners is not the business but the crowd — so the way to keep an energy position without paying up for the most popular trade is to own producers that are working but have not attracted the same attention.
The backdrop supports it: producers have been drilling less since the war began, which keeps supply tight, and the emergency US oil reserve is at a record low and will eventually have to be bought back.
Diamondback is the other producer Terranova points to as the less-crowded way to stay long energy — "those are working as well." Same logic as Devon: the sector's leadership is real, but the refining names have already attracted the momentum money, and an oil-and-gas producer gives you the sector exposure without the positioning risk he is flagging.
GLD is the fund that simply holds gold bullion. Two separate signals turned positive today. First, the options market: traders bought roughly three call options (bets on a rise) for every put, on two and a half times the normal volume, with the single most popular contract a bet that the fund rises about 5% by mid-October. Second, Wells Fargo reiterated a $4,900 gold target for 2026.
Liz Thomas's explanation of the round trip is the useful part. She stopped liking gold in the spring not because it fell but because she could no longer explain why it was moving — a good discipline. Her account of the selloff: central banks, which had been the biggest buyers, had to raise cash to cushion their economies against high oil prices, so they sold. Oil is still elevated but no longer as damaging, and continuing geopolitical tension gives those same central banks a reason to swap dollars for gold reserves again.
That is why she thinks demand is genuinely new rather than a reflex to today's Treasury announcement, and why she can see gold reaching 5,000 in this cycle.
Agnico Eagle mines gold, which makes it a leveraged way to own the metal: its costs are largely fixed, so a rise in the gold price flows disproportionately into profit.
Kevin Simpson owns it — it was his best performer last year — and describes an unusual setup. The stock is up roughly 50% in the past month, yet it is still down about 9% over six months. In other words, a violent rally has not yet recovered the earlier decline, so the recent move is a recovery rather than a stretched extension. "I like AEM here and I like gold moving higher."
TLT holds long-dated US government bonds. Bond prices move opposite to yields, and long bonds move the most — so when the Treasury announced it would double the size of its buybacks of long-dated debt, TLT was the direct beneficiary, and options traders bought twice as many calls as puts.
The bigger idea underneath is what the whole desk took from today: by acting the day after the 30-year yield went above 5.30%, the Treasury effectively revealed the level at which it becomes uncomfortable — and signalled it will keep intervening into the November midterms. Traders now believe there is a ceiling on long-term yields, which is the same thing as believing there is a floor under long bond prices. Michael Santoli's caveat is worth keeping: nobody knows the half-life of a measure like this.
IBIT is the fund that holds bitcoin directly. Oliver Renick called its options activity "arguably the most bullish in a long time": traders bought almost five calls for every put, on six times the normal volume, helped by news of favourable regulatory measures.
The context is that bitcoin has lagged — its price is back only to June levels while gold is back to May — so this is positioning for a catch-up rather than chasing something that has already run. Bryn Talkington picks the thread up later: "looks like crypto's finally waking up," which is the basis for her tactical case that Robinhood, whose revenue rises and falls with crypto trading, could heat up with it.
Fundstrat's Tom Lee added JPMorgan to his list of core stock ideas and the committee agreed without argument — Simpson calls it "best of breed financial services" and points to a specific driver: the reopening of the market for new stock listings. Investment banks earn large fees underwriting IPOs, and he thinks that revival is not over.
There is one technical objection worth understanding, and Liz Thomas raises then dismisses it. Banks classically make money from the gap between short-term and long-term interest rates, so a flatter curve — which is what the Treasury's buyback produces — is usually bad for them. Her answer is empirical: financials have performed strongly all year while the curve flattened, so the textbook relationship is not what's driving them right now; loan growth, capital-markets activity and credit quality are.
Arista makes the high-speed switches that move data between the thousands of chips inside an AI data centre. It is the plumbing of the AI buildout rather than the processing, and Terranova has held it as a core position for some time.
His argument is the cleanest kind: revenue growth is accelerating. Tom Lee added it to his core ideas list today, and Simpson agrees with the call.
What makes it notable is the contrast with the rest of Terranova's day. He describes money leaving momentum names, memory chips and semiconductors — and yet networking is the part of the AI complex he is keeping, alongside peers Cisco and Ciena.
When Terranova sold Robinhood — on a breakdown in the stock's momentum, not on the business — he said where the money went: "I'd rather go to Interactive Brokers."
The appeal is the same underlying trend without the same volatility. Both firms earn more when people trade more, but Interactive Brokers serves professional and active traders and derives far less of its revenue from cryptocurrency, so it does not swing with bitcoin the way Robinhood does — the exact issue the rest of the desk spent several minutes arguing about.
Walmart reports tomorrow morning and the shares have been disappointing. The options market is positioned cautiously: traders expect a 4.6% move, over half the volume is in puts (bets on a fall), and two-thirds of the roughly $60 million of premium traded is on the bearish side. Last quarter's decline was bigger than options had predicted, which is why the hedging is heavy.
Terranova owns it and is unmoved. His case rests on a simple record — Walmart has beaten expectations on revenue every single quarter since the pandemic — plus a specific near-term item: tariff refunds that should benefit this quarter and the next. (When tariffs are rolled back or successfully challenged, importers can be repaid duties already paid, which lands as a straight boost to profit.)
Anthropic is still private but has filed to go public, and today it came out ahead in the first serious side-by-side comparison with OpenAI. Kate Rooney's reporting: Anthropic was profitable at least on an EBITDA basis (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation — a rough measure of whether the core operation makes money before financing and accounting charges), and brought in about $11.5 billion in the quarter.
On annualised revenue, Anthropic has ramped to roughly $65 billion against OpenAI's roughly $40 billion. The judgement that matters to investors is the margin profile: Anthropic appears to be growing faster and losing less.
Two honest caveats: these are private companies, so the accounting may not be directly comparable, and the numbers come from sources rather than filings. Both will have to publish audited figures in their IPO prospectuses, which is where this comparison gets settled.
OpenAI is the one being marked down in this comparison. Per the Wall Street Journal, its operating loss grew to $12.3 billion in the second quarter, up from about $9 billion in the first — and, crucially, the losses grew faster than the revenue, which was just under $7 billion (up about 18% on the quarter). Growth that costs more to buy each quarter is the pattern investors punish.
The fair counterweights, both stated on air: the data is backward-looking, covering the three months to the end of June, and things appear to have improved since — July revenue grew 20% and enterprise revenue 32%, confirmed on the network by president Greg Brockman. But as Rooney notes, revenue growth "doesn't speak to profitability, and that's the thing that's really getting attention."
Why it matters now: both OpenAI and Anthropic are on file with the SEC to go public, so the two will be compared directly by public investors, and the audited numbers in their prospectuses will settle it. The steady drip of senior departures is an added overhang.
TJX owns TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods. Its results were solid — comparable-store sales up 4%, full-year guidance untouched — but the outlook for the current quarter disappointed and the stock sold off.
The instructive part is Simpson's hedge. Just before the report he sold "covered calls" against half his position: he collected a cash premium in exchange for agreeing to sell those shares at $152.50 if the stock rose above that. That caps his upside on half the holding but cushions a decline. Because the option expired within days and the premium was large, the return works out — if you could repeat it endlessly, which you cannot — to about 600% a year.
Terranova's objection is about where the weakness sat. Roughly 60% of the business is the Marmaxx division (TJ Maxx and Marshalls), and that is precisely where sales came in light. HomeGoods and the international business being strong doesn't compensate when the core misses.
Tom Lee put Robinhood on his 2026 avoid list and three committee members disagreed — from two completely different directions, which is why the net stance here is neutral.
Simpson, who owns it, argues the business has outgrown its reputation: revenue up 32% to a record $1.13 billion, earnings per share up 48%, a record $22 billion of net assets, plus an acquisition of a registered investment adviser and a custody platform. His point is that the market still prices Robinhood as a bitcoin proxy — which it was in its day-trading COVID incarnation — and that this is now wrong. He concedes the valuation is high and that the stock has gone nowhere for a year, but over three years few holdings have made him more.
Talkington reaches the same bullish conclusion from the opposite premise: she thinks the stock is driven by crypto, and crypto is finally waking up, so it should heat up tactically. She is out of the position — her covered calls were exercised at $110 — but disagrees with Lee anyway.
Terranova sold it for a reason unrelated to the debate: the stock's momentum broke down, and he would rather own Interactive Brokers.
An unusually frank assessment from a holder. Simpson thought the quarter was good — results beat his expectations, the professional-contractor business was excellent, and management did not cut guidance, which he judged better than Lowe's did the same day.
But he expects the stock to go nowhere for a while, and says so: with mortgage rates where they are the housing market is frozen, people are not moving, and people who do not move do not renovate. He calls it "more dead money" than Netflix, the desk's usual example of a stock stuck in a range.
His conclusion is a holding rather than a buying case: own it for the eventual turn, because when rates finally come down Home Depot benefits — but be aware you are paying a much higher multiple of earnings than for Lowe's, and none of this resolves in the next few weeks.
Lowe's gave a muted outlook and had its price target cut, into a housing market the industry itself described as frozen a day earlier. High mortgage rates keep existing owners in place, and home-improvement spending follows moves and renovations.
The direct comparison is what makes it negative rather than merely dull: Simpson, who owns Home Depot instead, said Home Depot's numbers exceeded his expectations, its professional business was strong and it did not lower guidance — "I thought it was better than what we saw out of Lowe's today." His one point in Lowe's favour is the cheaper valuation: Home Depot trades at a materially higher multiple.
Summary derived from the public CNBC Halftime Report audio episode (transcript in transcript.txt) for personal study. Not investment advice. © CNBC for source material.